Identification of Immunoreactive Leishmania infantum Protein Antigens to Asymptomatic Dog Sera through Combined Immunoproteomics and Bioinformatics Analysis

• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0149894
• Publication Date: 2016-02-23T18:25:46Z
• Authors: Maria Agallou; Evita Athanasiou; Martina Samiotaki; George Panayotou; Evdokia Karagouni
• Keywords: Epitope mapping

Leishmania infantum is the etiologic agent of zoonotic visceral leishmaniasis (VL) in countries Mediterranean basin, where dogs are domestic reservoirs and represent important elements transmission disease. Since major focal areas human VL exhibit a high prevalence seropositive dogs, control canine could reduce infection rate humans. Efforts toward this have focused on improvement diagnostic tools, as well vaccine development. The identification parasite antigens including suitable histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I- and/or II-restricted epitopes very since disease protection characterized by strong long-lasting CD8+ T CD4+ Th1 cell-dominated immunity. In present study, total protein extract from late-log phase L. promastigotes was analyzed two-dimensional western blots probed with sera asymptomatic symptomatic dogs. A 42 spots were found to differentially react IgG while 17 these identified Coommasie stain extracted analyzed. Of these, 21 proteins mass spectrometry; they mainly involved metabolism stress responses. An silico analysis predicted that chaperonin HSP60, dihydrolipoamide dehydrogenase, enolase, cyclophilin 2, 40, one hypothetical contain promiscuous MHCI MHCII epitopes. Our results suggest combination immunoproteomics bioinformatics analyses promising method for novel candidate development or potential use sensitive tests.